The launch of Navic

ISRO's navigational system has a few more barriers to cross

Last week, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the seventh and last satellite required to set up India's own satellite-based navigational system, which should be fully operational within a few months. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, which has been named Navic (Navigation with Indian Constellation), will offer accurate positional coverage within the Indian territory and roughly 1,500 km beyond India's borders. With this, India also joins a select club of nations since Navic will eventually offer services similar to the American GPS, Russia's Glonass, Europe's Galileo and China's BeiDou. All the other systems are designed to offer global coverage by deploying over 25 satellites, while the seven-satellite Navic will focus on coverage on and around the Indian subcontinent.

Like GPS, Galileo and Glonass, Navic will offer different categories of services. Some of these would be free and others would be available at a price. The claimed minimum positional accuracy of 20 metres for the generic service is much less impressive than GPS and Glonass standards, which have an accuracy average of between five and 10 metres. However, Navic in reality, should have an accuracy of five to 10 metres, within India's land borders and territorial waters. The restricted services, meant for the national security forces, would offer positional accuracy of an order that is currently not available. Navic is, in fact, considered a security imperative. The GPS or Glonass don't make their most highly accurate offerings available, except to their own security forces. Indeed, there are no guarantees that even the public services of those systems could not be shut down at will, sending users into crisis.

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There are also a whole host of civilian uses for which Navic could be deployed across India, either in preference to, or to complement the currently used popular American GPS. Apart from navigation, Navic will be of help in precise time-keeping, disaster management, fleet management, mapping and municipal tax assessment. There may be a few snags along the way. Modern smartphones can receive GPS, Galileo and Glonass signals, since the three services are interoperable. Navic may require new chipsets, or an upgrade to current phones, to become interoperable. That puts a question mark on its popularity and cost-effectiveness. That barrier will have to be crossed before Navic becomes off-the-shelf technology.